#kkachi

kkachi: i would say that for me, what i'm focusing on is how i can best bring out their character arc. for all three characters, it fundamentally boils down to having lost and learning to love again. their basic character arc is the same, which keeps them glued together narratively. how they respond to this fundamental arc, and the specific quirks to how they react, makes them different characters and POVs

i'll use yassen as an example. yassen would not be an interesting character to write if he was just doing regular assassin-y things in his scorpia era. he's interesting to write because of the tension between the calcified amoral armour he wears against the beating heart inside.

take the B&B up until the climax in chapter 11, for example. many people have pointed out that the violence of his response seemed disproportionate. this was on purpose! yassen's hammer is Murder and every target looks like a nail. that was the only hammer he has been allowed to use for over two decades. avoidance and then violence, in that order, are the only things that he knows will work.

then, sticking to the survival mechanisms he knows, in the throes of anomaly-induced panic, he shoots danny in the throat.

his actions and POV in that moment of pure fear reveal so much about him as a character: that he cares enormously for alex, that he cannot abide by the violence that was and continues to be done unto alex by the agencies vying for his free will, that he is grieving and has probably never reconciled that grief, and that faced with something scary, his answer is always the gun. even when it's not a good idea.

then there's, of course, the perceptual filters. danny is so fun for this one, obviously, but understanding each character's unique outlook on the world tells you so much. it tells you what details to prioritize in a description (facial expressions? smells? darkness? pressure points? vantage points? identifiable features?). it tells you how to write those descriptions (is fear bright? cold? creeping? does it remind you of a memory? can you taste it? do you try your best to ignore it?). this sews itself neatly to the bones of the plot skeleton and makes something very, very fun and meaty to chew on.

Kei response: Hi speck! Thank you so much for sending this amazing ask! Like kkachi said, a big part of writing them, and any character for that matter, is having the context. Their histories dictate so much of how they act and react to things. The more you can know about a character, the better you can write them.

For me personally, something I do actually is focus on their mannerisms and body language! Thinking about how they visually hold themselves or move through a space really helps me get into their shoes and write how they interact with the world they're in and each other.

Also, a key thing for me is just… how long you've spent writing a character. Like all things, you get better the more you do it, and I think the same is true with characters. My sweet spot is usually 20-30k words. Once I've written a character for that long, something about them just clicks and locks into my brain and it gets way easier for me to write from their perspective. (Funny enough! It's kinda why we started this fic in Danny's perspective iirc. I for sure had more experience, and therefore comfort, in writing from Danny's perspective as opposed to Alex or Yassen.)

On writing Danny: His POV is like. Two steps towards 3rd person omniscient with Danny as the filter

kkachi: it's so interesting writing him because sometimes he's still a teenage boy but sometimes it's so clear that he really did die in there and lost his humanity along the way

On writing Yassen: Yassen, more often than not is the perspective we struggle with the most. The way we approach writing him is based in literary fiction actually! We use a lot of narrative distance for him to have that sort of... Disconnected and pragmatic feeling to him. And we only close that distance for emotional effect when his mask cracks so to speak!

kkachi: yeah ^ one of the things we try to do is tell his emotional story in the actions and the omissions.

Focus on Alex. 

Focus on Alex.

Danny stares blankly through the keening hunger. 

Alex isn’t even strapped in properly, lying horizontal over the other two seats of the SUV. The engine roars in his ears, chaotic.

He fucked up. Almost fucked it all up. It was almost his fault. He needs to make it right.

Focus on Alex.

He sucks in another breath. It lands on his tongue. Holds it there. Blows it out. Dead air.

“You should sit up. Put on your seatbelt,” he says.

Alex twitches, and confusion rises from him momentarily—like he’s not sure Danny is talking to him. Like he isn’t confident where he is. But it settles, and Alex works up a smile.

“You sound like Yassen.”